Pre-emption, a question of who's the boss

Lawmakers have filed a series of bills pre-empting local authority to regulate taxis, fracking, and how long a home can rented.

Lobbyists work in the rotunda between the House and Senate chambers during the session at the Capitol.
Lobbyists work in the rotunda between the house and senate chambers during session, Tuesday, April 28, 2015, at the Capitol in Tallahassee, Fla.(Photo: AP)

The state legislature is meeting until March 11 and that has local governments looking anxiously at the state capitol. Lawmakers have filed more than 20 bills seeking to pre-empt local authority on issues including oil and gas regulations, construction standards for abortion clinics and whether a town can declare itself a sanctuary city.

Tallahassee City Commissioner Scott Maddox said he is stunned by how Florida lawmakers object to any federal intrusion, then issues mandates to governments under their jurisdiction.

“We hear from state leaders we don’t like what the federal government is doing with Medicare, we don’t like what the federal government is doing with immigration, we don’t want high speed rail,” said Maddox. “Yet they have no trouble saying to cities, counties and school boards do these things this way when the decision should be made at the local level.”

Where decisions should be made often depends on how you think about the issue.

This session, Sen. Thad Altman R-Rockledge, is in the middle of the annual tug of war between the legislature and local governments over who controls what. He’s sponsoring two pre-emption bills; one takes power away from the locals regarding the regulation of vacation rentals and one gives more control to locals when it comes to smoking.

His vacation rental bill, he explained, is an attempt to accommodate the new ways of doing business that comes with digital technology. After Friday's Senate session, Altman held up a smartphone and said it enables a person getting on a plane in Seattle to book a rental on the Coast and have a Uber driver waiting when they arrive in Tallahassee.

His bill, said Altman, updates the law to accommodate new technology and has roots in free enterprise and property rights.

“There should not be a prohibition on rentals,” said Altman. “I think the final product we come up with will empower local governments to have a regulatory scheme to protect neighborhoods, but not a prohibition on vacation rentals.”

His other pre-emption bill allows cities and counties to enact stricter anti-smoking laws than the ones on the state’s books.

“Smoking is one of the significant health hazards that we have, and some local governments say they would like to have more control to protect children, to protect those who may be in open air restaurants,” said Altman. “I think it is an area where we do need more local control.”

Maddox and groups like the Florida League of Cities say there is a need for more local control in many areas besides smoking regulations. Maddox argued the government closest to the people is in the best position to make laws reflecting a community’s values.

Those community’s values are the heart of the pre-emption bill that packed the Capitol’s halls last week. Coalitions of immigration groups brought more than 300 families to Tallahassee to protest HB 675. It would define and prohibit sanctuary communities. It mandates local governments to enforce federal immigration laws and impose fines of up to $5,000 a day on officials who enact policies providing sanctuary to undocumented immigrants.

“It’s a bill that forces law enforcement to terrorize our community,” said Pamela Gomez, a coordinator with the group We are Florida.

The House Civil Justice Subcommittee approved HB 675 with a 9-4 partisan vote, Republicans for and Democrats against. The proposal would allow people who have been victims of crimes in sanctuary communities to sue the local government if the crimes were committed by undocumented immigrants.

Metz said it is important to enforce federal laws especially when Washington is failing to do so.

“This bill says, as a matter of policy in the state of Florida, that we’re not going to tolerate state or local governmental agencies from refusing to cooperate with the enforcement of existing federal immigration law,” Metz explained to the committee. “The enforcement of existing federal immigration law is very limited under the current administration as it is right now; just targeting mainly those with criminal backgrounds.”

Commissioner Maddox hasn’t read Metz’s bill. In a discussion about the legislature’s willingness to overrule local governments on the regulation of guns, wages, taxis and the location of utility lines, he said he didn’t like a broad outline of Metz’s bill.

“What we are doing here is fighting a propaganda battle to gain political points,” said Maddox. “It would seem the legislature would have more important things to do like funding education and taking care of our infrastructure than to pick battles that are making national headlines and will take away rights from local governments.”

Contact James Call at jcall@tallahassee.com and follow on Twitter @CallTallahassee.